Nikolai Bukharin

But the campaign had caused lasting devastation, the exact numbers may never be known, but most historians estimate that millions of Russians were either executed or shipped off to the dreaded Siberian gulags between 1936 and '38. Perhaps the Soviet psyche suffered just as much damage, as an entire nation and its attendant culture sank into a deep-seated paranoia and a frightened submission to the state, the effects of which are still being felt in Russia today. This was, not coincidentally, the…

“Brother and the Soviet Union” In the book 1984 by George Orwell, the protagonist Winston Smith lives in a futuristic dystopian society with tyrannical rulers and corrupt governments. The book contains many references and allusions to the Soviet Union at the time of Stalin’s rule. Orwell used his knowledge and experience from communism and Soviet Russia at the time to write 1984. The dictator in 1984 was called “Big Brother” and was very similar to Joseph Stalin. Big Brother has a “heavy…

The book “Tyranny of Good Intentions” reviews how the American justice system and the government have shifted over time. The book highlights accidental/and/or unforeseeable consequences of otherwise well intentioned policies and laws. In their book, Paul Roberts and Lawrence Stratten argue that a legal system designed to protect individual rights and ensure justice has become hostile and prone to abuse. The book starts out by highlighting the many cases in which citizens have been targeted, had…

In the 1920s, the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin, distanced the newly formed government from the policies of War Communism through a series of decrees. Under War Communism, the Bolshevik Party practiced class warfare against the peasants and justified the use of force to carry out grain requisitioning, this led to repression and violent disturbances in the countryside, the Bolsheviks relied on these methods to retain power and win the war. By examining the origins of the policy of…